ul force
under Don Luis Puerto Carrero relieved them from this fearful peril. El
Zagal abandoned the assault, but set fire to the town in his rage and
disappointment, and retired to his stronghold of Guadix.

The example of El Zagal roused his adherents to action. Two bold Moorish
alcaydes, Ali Aliatar and Yzan Aliatar, commanding the fortresses
of Alhenden and Salobrena, laid waste the country of the subjects of
Boabdil and the places which had recently submitted to the Christians:
they swept off the cattle, carried off captives, and harassed the whole
of the newly-conquered frontier.

The Moors also of Almeria and Tavernas and Purchena made inroads into
Murcia, and carried fire and sword into its most fertile regions. On the
opposite frontier also, among the wild valleys and rugged recesses of
the Sierra Bermeja, or Red Mountains, many of the Moors who had lately
submitted again flew to arms. The marques of Cadiz suppressed by timely
vigilance the rebellion of the mountain-town of Gausin, situated on a
high peak almost among the clouds; but others of the Moors fortified
themselves in rock-built towers and castles, inhabited solely by
warriors, whence they carried on a continual war of forage and
depredation, sweeping down into the valleys and carrying off flocks
and herds and all kinds of booty to these eagle-nests, to which it was
perilous and fruitless to pursue them.

The worthy Fray Antonio Agapida closes his history of this checkered
year in quite a different strain from those triumphant periods with
which he is accustomed to wind up the victorious campaigns of the
sovereigns. "Great and mighty," says this venerable chronicler, "were
the floods and tempests which prevailed throughout the kingdoms of
Castile and Aragon about this time. It seemed as though the windows of
heaven were again opened and a second deluge overwhelming the face
of nature. The clouds burst as it were in cataracts upon the earth;
torrents rushed down from the mountains, overflowing the valleys; brooks
were swelled into raging rivers; houses were undermined; mills were
swept away by their own streams; the affrighted shepherds saw their
flocks drowned in the midst of the pasture, and were fain to take refuge
for their lives in towers and high places. The Guadalquivir for a time
became a roaring and tumultuous sea, inundating the immense plain of the
Tablada and filling the fair city of Seville with affright.

"A vast black cloud moved over